


look sharp, here I be

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Light Angst, Loyalty, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 07:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: Wounds open quick and heal slow.Ephraim can’t go home after that.





	look sharp, here I be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azurrys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurrys/gifts).



> i loved the post-canon prompt about ephraim and seth, because that's my Jam™, but the stuff that you said and your thoughts about ephraim and lyon and the way ephraim thinks about the world resonated with me as well. i've always sort of wondered what happens to the fe lords after their games, and whether or not they really rebound as well as the narratives seem to have them. i hope this is sort of what you were interested in!!! happy valentines season!
> 
> title from 1776, "mama, look sharp"

When Lyon was a child, he had wanted to make a future where Grado would be safe. The scars of the past generation were still raised; keloids that had become as much a part of the country as was the flag. He had grown up looking around at the corpses and mausoleums that had been built into their empty, broken souls and wondering, _how can we unmake this_? Goodness had always been as much of a part of him as had breathing, and he had been devoted to the future of his country from the moment he could walk and speak.

As it had turned out, there was such a thing as  _too much of a good thing_.

When you emptied your heart of everything but hope, the real estate was there for the taking.

 

 

When Eirika was a child, she had oft sat at her father’s knee, and listened as he spoke of history. The world is not young, and humans are not a race known for changing: the individual may change their attitude, by might or right, to become a better person, but humans are humans, and greed is timeless. She would listen as she heard stories of far-off wars and conquests, the past cast more colorful than the present to her childhood eyes.

She had come out of that early introduction to the horrors of war with two facts of certainty: first, everyone takes differently to war, and not always for the better. Second, we cannot always get what we want.

So she is not surprised when, two days after they’ve dug a six foot plot filled only with fresh soil and topped with a stele, said a lot of empty words that don’t mean much, and she’s cried a great many tears that burned her eyelids, Ephraim comes to her when she’s dressing in the morning. He knocks on her tentpole, and says:

“I’m leaving.”

Eirika becomes Queen of Renais with no fanfare, and with no crown, because she’s seen the shock that shattered her brother behind his eyes, and she knows better than to try to piece him together when he isn’t yet ready to even have pieces again.

 

 

When Seth a child, he had knelt before Fado on the dais of the Renais castle. The bells had tolled midnight watch as he’d recited the Knight’s Oath, the cold of the flagstones sinking into his knees. He had wished for only one thing: to serve his country, in whatever capacity he could, until such time his heart went slow and his breath went stale.

It is why when Eirika invites him into her rooms in Castle Renais he is not prepared for her to say: “I need you to leave.”

It is gentle, the way his world begins to break.

“Of course,” Seth replies, his voice cracking in the middle as his soul shatters into pieces. “I understand. If I am no longer wanted then I shall certainly leave on the morrow. Thank you, Majesty, for—“

“No,” Eirika laughs. “Not like that. You are very much wanted.” She stands, crosses to him, takes his hands. There was a time, not long ago, when her hands were still soft with privilege, a life lived inside a castle. Now, her hands are as roughened and ruined by calluses as Seth’s own are. Her face is shuttered, her eyes unreadable, her heart made hard with purpose. “You know Ephraim is leaving.”

Seth had guessed. He nods mutely. “You wish me to go with him,” he adds for himself, after a moment, and Eirika releases his hands, folds her palms together, and nods. In this moment, he can see the way that the last few trappings of youth hang upon her—not innocence or childhood or immaturity, no, but a pall of the fear of the unknown, a youth lost to war and an adulthood gifted to her in as much parts blood as flesh.

Eirika and Ephraim have been raised their whole lives knowing their father will die, and they will rule. But there is a difference between the _knowing_ and the _known_.They never expected it to be like this.

Nobody did.

“I don’t want him to be alone,” Eirika says at last, her voice pitched low and hurt. “Lyon is gone, and I'm needed here, and he’s never—he’s never been alone like this, before.” She looks back at Seth. “Renais needs you. _I_ need you. But Renais and I...we have others. And you will always be welcome home.”

Ephraim is alone.

For Ephraim, there isn’t a home. Not any more.

Seth bows before her, presses a kiss to the signet upon her finger, and remembers the first he did when he knelt before her father. “It will be done, Majesty, and I pray ‘ere long we both will return to your side.”

Eirika smiles at him, and her smile says _you won’t_.

 

 

When Ephraim was a child, he could not envision the future. He lived in a present made of how quick he could swing a sword and how long a bruise could linger. His sister was reared on stories of leadership and governance; his best friend upon hopes for a future from a country that hung onto the shredded curtains of the fast; but Ephraim’s mother’s milk was  _battle_ , and all that which comes of war. While Eirika learned of that which has made the past and Lyon learned that which will make the future, Ephraim made himself into the agent of the present.

And then, they all grow up. Lyon dies, and Fado dies, and Grado almost dies, and then past wars stop being stories, and future hope starts being impossible, and blood isn’t a mistake in practice and death becomes something Ephraim can describe the sight and smell and taste of, and somewhere in there a little piece of himself goes still and quiet and never speaks up again. Something he didn’t realize that he needed until it was gone.

He can’t go home after that.

 

 

With Lyon gone, there’s a little bit less hope and goodness in the world, and a little bit more empty space that lingers inside Ephraim’s chest. When he tries and fails to be the King and General he wants to be, it becomes easier to simply go away, and become something else instead. Fill a hole that needs filling, rather than one that's filled.

There’s a whole world outside of Renais, after all. Magvel needs to rebuild just as much, and Kings and Queens may reign on newly-anointed thrones in palaces that are stalked by ghosts, but someone has to travel the roads and streets that everyone else does.

So Eirika becomes Queen, without a crown, holding hope for something Ephraim isn’t sure he still has inside him, and Ephraim goes to try and become the person Lyon maybe could have been, if he had lived long enough.

It’s two days outside the capital that he finds Seth in a small town, one of the many new villages that have sprung up in the wake of the wars, refugees from around Magvel founding new homes. It’s strange, seeing Seth out of armor, out of uniform: Ephraim forgets, more often than not, that Seth wasn’t  _always_ Captain of the Guard; that Seth is only a handful of years older than he and Eirika are.

“You out here on business?” Ephraim asks, and Seth smiles back at him, shrugs. His warhorse is saddled with travel packs, tents, bedrolls. “When are you returning to the castle?”

“I’m not,” Seth replies. He pats his sword, sheathed at the side of his saddle. “Lady Eirika asked if I would travel at your side, if you would have me as your companion. She did not want you to go the road alone.” Ephraim wonders if Seth said yes out of obligation, or because he wished to. There is a part of him that wishes to turn his back and ride away, refuse Eirika’s kindness, and be alone.

But Seth is still the one who rapped his knuckles with a wooden sword upon the sands, and who picked him up when the sand was ground into his scratches and cuts. And two ride better than one alone; two can pass the quiet darkness in conversation, minds and hearts as one. They can go together.

“Sure,” Ephraim says. “Why not.”

 

 

Wounds open quick and heal slow.

But Seth has been a constant as long as Ephraim has known there to be such a thing, and it is no different now. They are just different people, just as is the world is different, and the way they feel, the way they _think_ , changes. And Ephraim’s heart is worn down smooth as a river stone, so smooth there are no cracks willing to let anything in at all, anything but the sand which was there to begin with, so long ago.

Ephraim first fell in love as a very young boy, with a pale-faced child whose hopeful eyes now haunt him from beyond the grave.

Ephraim falls in love the second time with a man who has been beside him since before he remembers a side to have beside, with who he builds houses for the homeless, learns to fish for food, fights off bandits wearing armor that is in bad need of repair. Ephraim falls in love with Seth the same way that you do with the sound of the rain.

Slowly, and then all at once, until you can’t remember not being in love with it any more.


End file.
